The Internet has provided consumers with a new medium for electronic commerce. Currently, there exist several Internet services that provide consumers with access to menus for food products that can be ordered online.
World Wide Waiters is one such service in which each consumer and participating restaurants are linked via the Internet to the World Wide Waiter server. The World Wide Waiter server provides a web site that includes web pages having menus of several participating restaurants with home delivery and/or take-out service. The consumer can search for a menu either using a restaurant's name or a city.
The consumer can then place an order from the menu of a selected restaurant which is transferred to the World Wide Waiter server. The World Wide Waiter server then emails the order over the Internet to the restaurant. The restaurant confirms the order to the World Wide Waiter server. Upon receiving the restaurant's confirmation, the World Wide Waiter server transmits to the consumer a confirming email that the restaurant has received the order and will deliver the order.
In addition, World Wide Waiters allows a customer to fax the order directly to the World Wide Waiters office. Personnel at the World Wide Waiters office contacts the restaurant in order to process the order.
There are several shortcomings to this system. First, each participating restaurant needs to have Internet access to the World Wide Waiter server. This additional expense can deter restaurant proprietors from utilizing this type of home delivery service.
Second, the World Wide Waiter server downloads to the customer statically created HTML pages representing the menus of each participating restaurant. These menu web pages are preconfigured and stored in the server. The use of these statically configured menu web pages becomes a burden since it hampers the maintainability and scalability of the server to take on additional restaurants.
Waiters on Wheels is another Internet online ordering service that provides Internet consumers with a web site to advertise menus of participating restaurants and that accepts consumer orders. It faxes an order to a participating restaurant. It provides its own waiters which pick up the take-out order from a participating restaurant and deliver it to the consumer's location.
The menus are stored by the geographic location of a Waiters on Wheels office. A consumer searches those menus associated with the Waiters on Wheels office within their delivery location. A consumer can order online from the menu. The Waiters on Wheels server confirms receipt of the consumer's order by telephone. If the restaurant cannot deliver the order to the Internet consumer, the restaurant telephones the Waiters on Wheels office. The office in turn calls the consumer to inform them of the problem.
PizzaNet is another prior art online ordering system that provides Internet consumers with a web site including menus of participating pizza restaurants. To place an order, consumers enter their zip code, telephone area code, and the first three digits of their phone number. A list of participating pizza restaurants within the consumer's location is provided along with their menus. The consumer can then select the restaurant of his or her choice and order from its menu. PizzaNet receives the order from the Internet and faxes to the restaurant a copy of the order. In some instances, PizzaNet verifies the order by a return phone call and in other cases the pizza restaurant verifies the order by return phone call.
A shortcoming of the Waiter on Wheels and PizzaNet systems is in its method of communicating with the restaurant through a facsimile machine. The additional expense incurred in installing a facsimile machine can deter prospective restaurants from participating in this system. Further, once an order is received, all subsequent communications between the customer and the delivery system are performed via telephone calls which requires manual intervention.